


your love was handmade (for somebody like me)

by singsongsung



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23397892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: Jughead wakes as he always does, to the feeling of whiskers against his cheek, fur brushing his temple, and a soft paw, claws in, laid against his chest.Daemon AU.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 43
Kudos: 225
Collections: Riverdale Bingo Winter 2020





	your love was handmade (for somebody like me)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the riverdalebingo square "soulmate au." 
> 
> This fic borrows heavily from Philip Pullman's construction of daemons, with the twist that each person's daemon is not part of their own soul, but instead belongs to the soul of their soulmate. 
> 
> Title from Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You."

_there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear_  
_have i known you twenty seconds, or twenty years?_  
\- taylor swift, "lover"

Jughead wakes as he always does, to the feeling of whiskers against his cheek, fur brushing his temple, and a soft paw, claws in, laid against his chest. He wrenches his eyes open and sees what he always sees: Estrid’s green-brown eyes, half-lidded in contentment, shining with excitement about the day to come.

Essie loves mornings. Jughead does not.

“There’s a girl here,” Estrid says, her paw patting at his chest, a wordless prompt: _get up._

Jughead groans, throwing his forearm up over his eyes and wishing for another half hour of sleep. “’Course there is.”

“Don’t you want to take a shower before _both_ of them beat you to it?”

“I can smell today,” he mumbles. Sleep is tugging at him, still, and he’s desperate to give in.

Estrid walks onto his chest, a soft but solid weight, and nudges her forehead against his jaw. “Jug,” she says, chidingly.

“I’m awake, Es,” he sighs, dropping a hand onto the back of her neck and sliding it down her body. “S’just early.”

“It’s almost _nine_ ,” she tells him, arching her back. She pokes her wet nose firmly against his chin and then hops off his chest, settling at his side expectantly.

Heaving a dramatic sigh for Estrid’s benefit, Jughead sits up and drops his legs over the side of the bed. The floor is faintly chilly beneath his bare feet. Autumn’s crisp, invigorating hold is loosening in Hartford, giving way to a wintry nip in the air. He’s dreading the need to turn up the temperature on the apartment’s thermostat and the accompanying bill.

Estrid winds herself between his legs, flicking her tail sharply against one of his calves.

“I’m _up_ ,” he huffs grouchily, standing and scrubbing a hand over his face. He pulls on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater, so he doesn’t run into Archie’s latest hook-up in only his boxers, and drags his fingers through his hair, which needs cutting badly. He doesn’t have a mirror in his room, so he’s not quite sure how it looks, but he’s not trying to impress anyone.

The doorknob of his room wiggles beneath his hand when he turns it; it needs to be tightened. As he plods toward the main living area, he hears girlish laughter, “ _Archie,_ ” said in a scolding tone. His automatic reaction is to roll his eyes, but he finds that he can’t. The air in the apartment feels suddenly thick, and it’s as if he’s moving in slow motion.

He rounds the corner to the kitchen and is met with the sight of Archie, clad only in his boxers, hair sticking up in about twelve different directions, attempting to make breakfast. There’s a girl perched on one of the barstools, very pretty, wearing a pair of Archie’s pyjama pants and a t-shirt that actually belongs to Jughead - it must’ve ended up in the wrong pile when they did laundry. Her blonde hair is loose and messy around her shoulders, and she’s smiling at Archie, crinkles at the edges of her eyes.

“Oh, hey, Jug,” Archie says, trying to swallow his laughter. “This is - ”

His sentence goes unfinished thanks to what happens next. All of Jughead’s ribs feel like they’ve been transformed into elastic bands, pulled tightly and then snapped back into place. His head is, paradoxically, swimming with clarity as he watches Estrid rush from his side toward Archie’s guest, the small creature that was perched on her shoulder (which Jughead knows, instinctively and inexplicably, to be a pika) scrambling down her body and over to his feet.

He bends down and scoops up the pika, who is practically dancing on his toes. He’s vaguely aware of the blonde he doesn’t know crouching down and touching Estrid’s soft, smooth head. A powerful shiver quakes through his body at the sensation. No one in this world, not even Archie, not even his little sister, has ever touched Estrid before.

The pika in his cupped hands leans into his chest like the small creature has finally reached a destination after a very, very long journey. “You found us,” he says, and Jughead _hears_ him.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Archie breathes, a small cloud of smoke rising from his abandoned frying pan, and holy shit is right, but what Jughead finds himself thinking is: of course.

Of course, Archie would be sleeping with his soulmate. How could he ever have expected anything less?

He faced a lot of teasing about Estrid as a kid, growing up on Riverdale’s South Side. The people who lived in Sunnyside Trailer Park had been persecuted, oppressed, neglected. They were always ready to move, and the birds that flew overhead represented that very fact. Some, whose families had historic membership in the South Side’s gang, the Serpents, had iguanas, bearded dragons, turtles, and of course various snakes for daemons. His parents both roamed the South Side with copperheads wrapped around their arms or necks. That meant they were perfect soulmates, every atom of their beings matched. It also meant they were an exception: soulmates whose relationship had the potential to end explosively - and erupt it did.

There was only one another kid with a mammal daemon in Sunnyside, Toni Topaz, but her red fox Circe was scrappy. Estrid was different. She was stubborn when they were kids, as she’s always been, and protective, but Jughead was protective of her in turn. Estrid was pretty, her light brown stripes giving way to a patch of pure white on her chest, the tip of her tail black like it’d been dipped in an inkwell. She was a housecat, not a predator. When they were young her fur was so fluffy and soft that touching her with the tip of just one finger would fill Jughead with comfort, with peace. When her claws came out, he’d let her arch her back and hiss at Sweet Pea’s gecko, but he’d scoop her up before she could scuffle.

It wasn’t until his first day at Riverdale Elementary, where his parents had somehow managed to get him registered, perhaps aware from Estrid’s shape alone that he didn’t really fit in with the other kids in his neighbourhood, that Jughead even knew mammal daemons were common. He met Reggie Mantle’s oriole, who fluttered her wings frantically and urged Reggie over to Josie McCoy and her pug on the very first day of kindergarten. He met Kevin Keller, who was trailed by an elk on spindly young legs. And he met Archie Andrews, whose daemon Vega was also a cat, albeit a much different cat than Estrid, a panther whose muscles moved sinuously as she walked, whose eyes seemed to hold secrets, and who would often lick one paw with a perfectly pink tongue and rub that paw over her head, preening.

Archie grinned the first time he watched Jughead watch Vega groom herself. “My dad says that means she’s pretty,” he divulged. “My soulmate.”

And Jughead blinked, looking down at Estrid, who was curled up in his arms, observing all the other students’ daemons. He loved Essie dearly; she felt like she was a part of him. But she wasn’t. She was a part of the soul that was mated to his, a soul, a _person_ he’d hardly considered before.

He thought of the blissful, contented comfort he felt each night when Essie curled her small, warm body up against his, her little head tucked beneath his chin, her breath a whisper against his neck, peace permeating every one of his bones, even if it was noisy on the South Side, even if his parents were fighting, even if thunder was rolling through the sky.

He looked down at his sneakers and smiled.

Jughead stares across the kitchen at the blonde girl wearing his t-shirt, the person whose life is destined to entwine with his own. Estrid is rubbing against the girl’s legs enthusiastically, her purrs at maximum volume. “That’s Jughead,” she tells the girl, her voice chirpy with joy.

“Jughead?” the girl repeats. She straightens up and then, when Estrid stands up on her back legs, front paws reaching eagerly upward, she breathes a laugh (pretty, sweet, a bit heartier than Jughead might’ve expected) and bends to scoop Es into her arms. “But that’s…” She uses her chin to indicate the pika who appears to be on the verge of napping in Jughead’s hands. “That’s Farlow.”

“It’s a nickname,” he explains for the thousandth time in his life. He once met a girl named Emma whose porcupine daemon was called Jaspar, and her eyes had gone wet with disappointment when he explained that _Jughead_ wasn’t on his birth certificate. “My name’s Forsythe. That’s Estrid.”

“I’m Betty,” the girl says. “Elizabeth.”

For a moment they both just stare, absorbing one another. Her eyes are green, sparkling gently in the sunlight pouring in through the windows for which he and Archie have yet to purchase curtains; her cheeks are faintly flushed, maybe from sleep, maybe - and the thought is jarring - from _him_ , his presence. Her jaw is well-defined and the line of it calls to his fingers, begging to be traced, to reveal to him the contrast of strong bones and soft skin.

Betty.

“Yeah,” Archie says, yanking Jughead out of his musings. His best friend is looking down at Vega, who is sitting prettily at his side. “Makes _total_ sense,” he says, clearly agreeing with whatever she’s communicated to him.

“What makes total sense?” Jughead asks. He can feel his hackles rising, though it’s hard to muster much exasperation given the way Farlow has practically glued one tiny ear to his heart, like Jughead’s pulse is the sound he’s been looking for. “That this would be awkward?”

Archie gives him a baffled look. “ _Awkward_? Man, this is _awesome_. You and Betty - ”

“It’s awesome that you slept with my soulmate?” Jughead asks, his eyebrows lifting skeptically.

“What?” Archie gasps, and Betty says, quickly, “No. Oh, no, no, no. Archie’s - Arch is like my cousin. God, no.”

Archie is nodding vigorously. “Yeah. Betty’s mom is friends with mine. We used to hang out every summer in Chicago. She goes to Yale. We didn’t - she slept in my bed, but not like _that_. We put a pillow between us. Farlow got mad when my _foot_ touched hers.”

“He likes his personal space,” Betty says, the curl of a fond smile on her lips. She meets Jughead’s eyes, her expression tentative but interested. “I’m guessing you do, too.”

“He does,” Estrid confirms traitorously.

That makes Betty’s smile grow wider, bright and beautiful, and Jughead is suddenly hyper-self-conscious of his old, ratty t-shirt and his overgrown hair. He’s imagined a thousand scenarios in which he’d meet his soulmate: at an old, quiet diner as the evening turned to night, both of them nursing cups of strong coffee; walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, lost in thought, stumbling into her, her elbow caught in his palm; in a used bookstore, pulling an old favourite down off a shelf like he could possibly need another copy, catching sight of an eye, of the corner of a smile, through the gap in the shelf he’d created. He never envisioned meeting her first thing in the morning in his apartment, his own t-shirt already hanging over the frame of her shoulders, its fabric falling over her breasts. It’s not the stuff of the novels he's read or the films he grew up on. It’s utterly ordinary, and it makes him feel, inexplicably, like a disappointment, like he failed Betty before he even knew her.

Farlow shifts in his hands, extending his small body as much as possible, peering up into Jughead’s face. “We already like you,” he says in a gentle voice. There’s something inquisitive in his little face, and Jughead wonders, absently, what that says about Betty, what that says about him. “We were born to like you.”

He’s immensely grateful that Archie can’t hear the daemon, but he knows Betty can. She presses her cheek against Estrid’s, a gesture Jughead’s made himself a hundred times, and Es coos with pleasure through her purrs.

“We made coffee,” Betty says. She shifts all of Estrid’s weight into one of her arms and reaches her other hand up to try and smooth down her hair - and that’s all it takes, just her fingertips against wispy blonde strands, for Jughead to understand that she’s nervous too, that she’s also probably harboured other ways this moment might have gone in her imagination over the years. “Do you want to… have a cup with me? Maybe out on the balcony?”

“Yeah!” Archie says enthusiastically, slamming a cupboard door open and grabbing mugs. “Good idea.”

“Thanks, Arch,” Jughead says dryly, but with warmth, and when he catches Betty’s gaze again, he sees that same sort of wry fondness in her eyes, starting right back at him.

It became obvious, during elementary school, that Jughead and Archie were not going to find their soulmates in their hometown. Riverdale was a small town, and despite the strong divide along its east-west boundary, everybody pretty much knew everybody. Your soulmate had to be within ten years of your own age (five years older or five years younger), so the kindergarteners who arrived at Riverdale and South Side Elementaries when Jughead was in fifth grade presented a final opportunity. The only kid in their class to find a soulmate that year was Melody Valentine - everyone else would have to wait until they saw the sign announcing their town as one with _pep!_ in a rearview mirror, or a new family moved in.

In the later years of middle school and into high school, Jughead’s peers did what teenagers without soulmates all around the world did: flirted, hooked up, entered vaguely committed relationships, and occasionally made ill-fated declarations of forever that would turn to dust as soon as one of their soulmates made an appearance. Archie was no exception, always grinning at the cheerleaders, making out with girls at parties, sharing a milkshake with two straws with Valerie Brown at Pop’s. Vega was tolerant of his exploits, only growling faintly, without lifting her head, when she felt Archie’s object of affection du jour was being too forward.

There were a couple girls on the school newspaper staff who probably would have said yes if Jughead asked them to go see a movie at the drive-in, but he never asked. He spent so much time feeling like he didn’t belong. He had the wrong kind of daemon for a South Side kid, he begged to go to the library in the summer instead of to the public pool, and his peers in Sunnyside viewed him as something of a traitor for attending school on the other side of town. On the North Side, he had Archie, but he still didn’t quite fit in: kids made fun of his beanie, he never had clothes from the trendy stores in Greendale, and he couldn’t afford to buy lunch in the cafeteria, not even on pizza day.

Since he was very young, he felt different, like the world had never bothered to carve out a space for him. To know that there was someone out there, someone made just for him, someone whose very being was designed to complement his own - it was something he kept close to his chest, like a treasured secret. He sometimes felt like the only kid in all of Riverdale who understood the gravity of what having a soulmate meant.

And even though he felt like the embodiment of a thirteen-year-old girl in a made-for-TV movie who swore she was waiting for her soulmate, only to be seduced into a kiss with her broad-shouldered, sweet-talking, non-soulmate neighbour, Jughead couldn’t bear the thought of giving his firsts to anyone else.

Outside, in the blazing sun and the brisk air, they sit down on the rickety-but-still-functional chairs Fred found at a garage sale. Betty’s pulled a wool peacoat on and slipped her bare feet into a pair of boots; Jughead’s wearing one of his sherpa jackets and his sneakers. In his lap, Farlow curls up against his mug of coffee, basking in its warmth. Estrid drapes herself over Betty’s thighs like a blanket.

“Archie’s told me a lot about you,” Betty says. The wind blows her hair across her face. “When we were kids, every third sentence started with _my best friend Jughead…_ ”

Jughead can’t quite quell his smile. Archie loves so deeply, so openly. It gets him into trouble sometimes, but it’s still something about him that Jughead envies. “I’m sure he told me about you, too.”

“Not anything you remember, though.” Betty doesn’t look upset about it, absently stroking a hand over Essie’s soft coat.

He throws her a sheepish smile. “I spent a lot of time in my own head as a kid.”

“Thinking about what?” she asks.

“Uh.” Jughead looks down into his mug of coffee. “Ironically… you,” he admits. “What you’d be like.”

Betty’s lips press together, the pressure turning them the palest pink. One day he’ll know exactly what that gesture means, if it says that she’s feeling shy or pleased or something else altogether. “And what’s the verdict?” she inquires softly. She lifts her mug and takes a sip. She’d added milk and a sprinkle of sugar, and that’s something else Jughead will know one day soon, will eventually learn by heart: how she takes her coffee. “Am I what you imagined?”

He looks at her tousled hair, her grey peacoat, the warmth she exudes so profoundly he swears he can feel it, even through the late autumn bluster. “I never imagined you’d be wearing my shirt when we met.”

She looks down at herself, startled, pulling the lapels of her coat apart slightly. “This is yours?”

“Yeah. Arch and I aren’t always the greatest at sorting our laundry.”

She fingers the fabric delicately, like it’s precious, and an ache blooms, sudden and sharp, in Jughead’s throat. “I didn’t expect I’d be wearing your clothes, either,” she says. “To be honest, I kind of imagined us meeting at a library.”

He swallows around the ache in his throat and breathes out something between a satisfied sigh and an incredulous laugh. “I had some thoughts about us meeting at a bookstore.”

An easy smile stretches across her lips. “You’ll have to share those thoughts with me, sometime.”

Jughead nods. “I - ”

He’s cut off by Farlow, who shifts in his lap somewhat irritably. “ _Kiss_ her,” he huffs. “She wants you to.”

“Far,” Betty chastises him in a murmur, embarrassed. She laughs helplessly as she looks from the pika to Jughead. It’s nervous laughter, shaky at its edges, and it fades as Jughead leans in, just a little. She leans in too, and Jughead throws a quick prayer to any god that might be listening that their chairs don’t break beneath them, and then he’s kissing the person he’s always been meant to kiss.

When Betty’s mouth fits itself against his, all his daydreams, chipped diner mugs and the scent of old books, wind blowing hair that smelled like vanilla and almonds against his cheek in the middle of a bridge, gazes catching and locking and _knowing_ , they cease to matter, they cease to _exist_. She tastes far better than any college student should have the right to on a Sunday morning; her lips are soft and ever-so-slightly greasy with chapstick, and they yield to the press of his own lips and then push back, willing to be explored but not willing to be conquered. A million images dart through Jughead’s mind, each one flashing by too quickly to be grasped and held: a shelf neatly lined with Toni Morrison novels, all published by Vintage; two wine glasses with burgundy stains on their rims, a silky black strap slipping off a shoulder with a smattering of freckles; sandy toes with nails painted hot pink dipping into the ocean; laughter by his ear, a weight in his arms, a threshold stepped over; an argument after dinner, his hands submerged in soapy water, a towel clutched tight between slim fingers, a flick of his wrist, an indignant shriek of _Jug!_ , the towel swatting against his arm and bubbles in his hair; a whisper in the dark, a duvet pulled overhead; the green eyes he’ll come to know better than anything else, looking up at him from a small, brand new face, dazed with their first glimpse of the world.

Betty must see it all, too, because when they pull apart he can see a sheen of wonder, something almost like reverence, painted across her face. The hand she rests against his shoulder is trembling.

“Wow,” she whispers.

And all Jughead can say in response before he kisses her again, grinning like an idiot, is: “Yeah.”

fin.


End file.
